Abandoned Baton Rouge

Red Stick Revisited

 

So I came back to the Red Stick for a weekend.

Cinclare Plantation Sugar Mill, Part 2

 

 

Apologies for the delay between posts. I was settling back to Brooklyn, procrastinating, freelance writing and looking for a steady job. (I am still looking, and very much hoping for good news about a recent job interview. Wish me luck!)

So! Where were we? In the first real post about Cinclare, we just finished up touring the main mill. But that still leaves numerous intriguing outbuildings and structures, so let's take a look at those. 

The photo below was taken inside the first molasses tank, which has been cut open for storage.

A Gothic Winter's Day in Civil War Territory

I recently headed north of Baton Rouge with two new pals I met through this blog to see some Civil War sites and other nearby points of interest.

With battlefield exploration, you have to fill in a lot of blanks with your imagination. My own brain supplied vague jumbles of mustachioed men in double-breasted coats fighting each other with bayonet guns and cannons. I'm not going to front--I have not retained a lot of information about the Civil War from high school history class, not that much of it ever sunk in. For me, any battle descriptions go in one ear and out the other, unless it's told with some compelling human element or perhaps if it is acted out in a movie starring Patrick Swayze. 

But for those interested and knowledgeable on such matters, I can tell you that we visited the site of the Siege of Port Hudson. Back then, it looked like this:

 

See those mounds in the illustration? If my sources are correct (and I have no reason to believe they're not), I'll show you what some of those mounds look like now.

Abandoned Multifamily House

Apologies for my absence from blogging; I've started a new job and am getting married in less than a month, both factors which are taking up energy I normally direct toward prowling around abandoned buildings like a weirdo. But I've been working on the facilities people at LSU to gain access to the historic condemned Huey P. Long Fieldhouse (if anyone can pull any strings, please do), and I got back to my prowling roots this weekend.

I don't know how I never noticed this huge empty house on the corner of Government and 22nd before, but it took biking right past it to finally notice.

 

Downtown Hodgepodge

I spent a late afternoon wandering around downtown last week because I decided to go through with my proposed idea, Main Street, Exiled: Disappearing Downtowns, on a new blog Disappearing Downtowns. I will only be here in Louisiana about one more year, so this new blog is a way to keep up the ABR-style photography wherever I roam.

Endless Buffet of Leftovers

And now, a bunch of sites I've been meaning to post from two recent excursions, but they were trumped by the showing and telling of the time I saw coffins and the time I could have ended up in a coffin.

First, yet another car repair joint, this one on Florida and more colorful than most. Note the sinkhole in the repair floor, below. 

 

Rough Xing: W T F ? !

This sign sums up Sunday's adventures, as co-explorer Kara observed. There was some rough crossing over train tracks going in every direction as we biked around an industrial area of Choctaw (further west than the last excursions on that road), and judging from a terrifying incident we witnessed, some rough double-crossing as well.

Our first stop was this former office.

From across the street, I saw the word ODDITY in the window.

Mom's Country Kitchen, Sleepy Hollow and more

Here are a few more stops from the same day as the last post.

Roller rink, Barq's plant, and more

I originally spotted Leo's Roller Rink on North a few months ago to my delight, but then found this website for a Leo's rink, called it to hear a human answer, and mistakenly thought the one pictured here was still open despite all appearances. Turns out that website was for a different Leo's location, duh.

The Racquetballer

I went to The Racquetballer immediately after getting a tip from a reader. He thinks it closed in the mid-80s and the inside probably looked like nothing had changed since. That was all I needed to hear.